It’s been two and a half years since Ned Collette was last in Australia, touring Wirewalker’s swirling and alchemic 2014 album, ’Networking In Purgatory’. Now he’s returning to play his only Australian shows, the first three Wednesdays of December in the upstairs room at Melbourne’s Gasometer Hotel. With a new and now very much long awaited double album finally done and due out next year (featuring among other things a collaboration with The Necks’ Chris Abrahams), this is a rare three-off chance to see one of Melbourne’s most compelling prodigal sons in an unusually intimate context. Collette will play different sets each week, touring through five albums and three EPs, from his 2006 domestic folk classic, ‘Jokes & Trials’, to the spectral vistas of 2012’s ‘2’, to previews of the new work. The first week he’ll play solo but after that he’ll be joined by many of his longtime local collaborators on strings, flute, clarinet, guitar and synths, namely, Biddy Connor, Erkki Veltheim, Belinda Woods, Timothy Pledger, Alexander Garsden, and James Rushford. Plus very special guest openers: 7th – Francis Plagne & Crys Cole duo, 14th – Tim Coster, 21st – Mick Turner (Dirty Three). Tickets available from Oztix – be quick, strictly limited to 80 per show. www.thegasometerhotel.com.au www.nedcollette.com